Soft Power
by paynesgrey
Summary: He wakes up bound, and suddenly he remembers a woman's power deep inside that could save him. Spoilers from Season Two previews. Peter x Niki implied.


Soft Power

He stirs in the darkness. Silence clogs his throat, but he hears chortling screams from somewhere outside. This place is wholly foreign to him.

He opens his tired eyes and squints. His fingers flex, and the flesh on his bones is real, clean and flawless. He should be dead. Peter knows this. He remembers exploding into a thousand pieces, a mish-mash of flesh, light and power.

Yet he is here, healed, and conscious in some dark gray world encased in cold steel. He clangs the handcuffs that bind him against his stationary restraint.

'Where am I?' he asks himself, and he wonders that maybe he's dreaming or on some boat ride to Hell. He can even smell the salty sea outside.

'Where is Nathan? Where is Mom?' He wants to cry, and his eyes turn soft and dull. 'Where is Claire?' She should have shot him, yet she had failed. He whimpers.

"Hello?" He screams as loud as he can, and numerous feet stir and shuffle above him. He hugs himself, cautious. The faces of his family fade away, and he tugs at his restraints. The memory of a blond woman flashes before his eyes. He doesn't know her, but he can feel her strength. 'Who ...?'

Her image wades in his brain. His mind refuses to let her go, and his blood shivers. The scratched image of the blond huddling with her family, watching him with sadness, creates a sense of permanence within him. But why?

He tugs at his restraints again, but his powers are unreachable. He almost panics. 'So is this because of the explosion?' There is no time for speculative musing.

The woman's image doesn't want to leave him alone, yet she's oddly satisfying, and her gentle presence warms his heart. (At least his empathy hasn't disappeared.) And Peter knows he desperately has to remember her if he wants to get out. Where is he? What is this place?

He inwardly admits to being scared. He's currently powerless (why? how?), and he has no idea what his captors intend to do with him. Who are they? Are they the company that Noah Bennet used to work for? Peter wonders if more of them are out there. He wonders hard and large, and it frightens him. There could be a whole underground world of people exploiting and tagging others with special abilities. 

It's almost too crazy that he can barely imagine it. 

This woman is just like him, and he knows that in this dire time of need, he has to remember her, whoever she is, with her soft light blond hair, feminine jaw and thin, alluring lips. For a second, he envies her husband. Her physical beauty is entrancing, and within her kind and saddened eyes, gentleness frames her expression. For her to join his fight, selflessly as her family sits wounded in the background, is a true sign of compassion - _courage_.

And Peter wishes he could get to know her more.

His head snaps up, and he hears louder footsteps above, charging and thumping toward him. His handcuffs jangle, and he's no closer to being free than he was before.

But he just has to remember. He has to search and squeeze into his darkest depths.

The brave blond woman's face plays like a movie reel in his head, and she nods to him. He closes his eyes and feels the dormant traces of her power rousing in his blood. The handcuffs bend, and he sees her smile at him with mysterious eyes and a mischievous lips.

He exhales heavily, pulling and shifting, and the metal whines as he tugs. His skin burns with friction as the hand cuffs warp in his grasp.

The woman's eyes soften, and her power surges. He can hear delicate laughter in his ear as one hand comes free. Her image fades, and his body shivers in failure. He wishes he could feel more of her, and suddenly, something maternal and familiar blankets him, telling him that their time will eventually come.

The door to his prison slams open, the impact clanging loudly against the metal hull. Peter holds up his free hand to the light burning in his face, and he breathes heavily. Disappointment and fear flares inside his core, and as the air hits his skin, he feels cold.

If only he knew more of the woman, he could have tapped into the full potential of her strength. Longing replaces his disappointment, and he knows if he'd only been stronger, he could have freed himself before his captors had arrived.

As the onslaught of hands shifts him and pushes him back, replacing his hands with new restraints, he thinks of the woman one last time. "Whoever you are, I hope I can tap into your power again and be just as strong as you are."

And suddenly, it is his mother's power that murmurs within him, reassuring him that his wishes are sooner to come true than he thinks.

THE END


End file.
